Prologue

All the heroes are dead.

-Patrick Luckie, Mobile Heights

The door rang like a cathedral bell in the otherwise silent gym. Fifty students held still in rapt horror as they stood behind the deputy, his shotgun held drum tight at the warping doors. Another slam brought moonlight through a narrow slit between the heavy steel and its jamb. The deputy held the trigger with no slack. A breath would release the firing pin now.

Another bang, and brown fur peered around the gap. Hellish growls rolled in as the deputy poised to end the life they emanated from. The doors were almost folded end on end now, the hinges bent, and then, with an echoing tear, they lurched inward. The monster careened in, met the deputy’s gaze. He looked at the amber eyes over the orange sights of the Mossberg, gaze held steady as he pulled the trigger. The blast momentarily blinded him in the dark room. The noise was louder than any gunshot he had ever heard. He yelled something as he fired, but he didn't know what. He never would. It cut right through the blast as if it were nothing. He had seen men decapitated by buckshot at this range, but the fur barely moved.

He jumped back, tried to bring the gun up as he saw the claws descending. The massive paw caught him in the right shoulder and bicep. It tore through his vests like linen. He felt his skin peeling crossways, opening to the raw fat and nerves underneath. The sheer force of the blow spun him, doubled him over, and deposited him, face first, onto the hard basketball floor, where his body landed on his gun.

He pushed, tried to force himself up, but his whole right side was numb. It was paralyzed, pure dead weight. He was at the mercy of something that knew none, an alien monster immune to bullets. He was dead. He prayed, simply pleading, over and over. This was no time to be specific in his requests. He already felt a puddle of blood forming under him. And then he heard their screams.

The thing was ripping, tearing, biting, clawing, depositing viscera across the floor, slipping in the blood from its own handiwork, going for every moving thing. There were two exits, and everyone shot to one of them. Thirty people tried to jam their way out the broken doors at once. The doorway was thirty-six inches wide. It was what police referred to as a “fatal funnel,” and now it served exactly that purpose, bottle-necking the panicking class, turning them into simple meat for a grinder. They were torn through in seconds. It separated them from the mass one or two at a time and went for the throat, the groin, the abdomen, the thighs. Not a single one of the wounds would have been survivable if it had happened to them on an operating table. The fate of the stricken was sealed as soon as tooth or claw made contact. The brutal spectacle was over within two minutes, and then, at light speed, it was gone, sailing from the room, leaving something beyond mere terror, or evil, or pain behind.

The deputy lay, listening to the screams and pleas of the kids. His kids. They cried, for their parents, for friends. Or they simply cried. He cried too. Silent tears streamed down his face as he quietly begged for them to stop. Just die already so it can stop, he wailed in his mind, but the agony would not end. As the teens’ cries slowly dwindled out, he was left to wonder why he had not died, even as pain drove him to thirst for death. His desire was as nothing though, as the night would only get worse. The true horror had yet to begin.

***

Arredondo County spread out beyond the cruiser’s headlights into seemingly endless abyss. Deputy Daniel Larston was several hours into his shift. It was a typically slow night, not much happened in the county. Not since the Massacre at least. He glanced ahead at the taillights he was trying to catch up with. Deciding he was now close enough to use the radar, he hit it and determined their speed: sixty-two; in a forty-five zone. Hell yeah, he thought. He turned on his light bar and touched the WAIL tone once, enough to send a single note reverberating through the still night. It echoed into the vast distance, and emptiness bore down on Larston. Backup was a long way off. No matter, he would execute his job just as his training officer had taught him, with the caveat in the back of his mind that traffic stops were one of the most dangerous activities. He also remembered that he had been exposed to maybe twenty-five percent of the job, if that, on training. But courage allowed for fear, it was how you handled the fear that counted. So Larston got on the radio to let dispatch know the situation, stepped out, turned on his handheld radio, and approached the car, a white Versa.

As he walked up the smell of marijuana nearly knocked him flat. Smoke emanated from the car as the window slowly rolled down, and a bloodshot eyed kid revealed himself as the driver. “Good evening, can I see your license and registration please?”

“Here,” the terrified kid said, handing him the Texas driver license and asking a passenger to find the registration. “This is my mom’s car, and I don’t know where everything is.”

Larston saw four occupants total, all juveniles, all high out of their minds, clearly scared of whatever repercussions they faced from parents.

“Why are you out here so late?” asked Larston.

The driver launched into a story about visiting a sick friend and some other obvious bullshit, which Larston quietly listened to before telling him he’d be right back, and backwalking slowly to his Charger to run the kid’s license. The Versa was indeed registered to his mother, and Mr. Dalton Eargle was sixteen according to his license. Larston got back out and re-approached, thinking that this would not be these kids’ night. “All right, is there anything in this car I need to know about?” he asked.

“N-no,” the driver stammered.

“Are you sure? No guns, knives, drugs, bazookas...?” Larston was amicable and humorous in his questioning, but everything was building to a definite point, where all would shake loose and this case would break open.

“No, nothing like that.”

It could be true of course. It would take a lot of weed to get four people so high, but they could have smoked it all. Still, that was doubtful, and Larston would be checking thoroughly for any that was left, although he really didn’t care about it unless it was a ridiculous amount. The kids would be scared straight tonight most likely. “All right,” said Larston, half sighing, like a father who is disappointed in a child’s explanation of how something was broken. “Go ahead and step out-”

He saw the movement in the corner of his eye, and as he turned it still did not come fully into focus, it was moving too fast, a furry streak bolting in on him. “What the hell?”

It was twenty feet away now, maybe less, and showing no sign of slowing down. Larston jumped aside and drew his sidearm. He fired two wild rounds into the night, cleanly missing the dog like...thing that had just slammed into the Versa. It jerked its head around and Larston ran. He rushed back to his own car and jumped inside, closing the door and reaching for his shotgun. The dog turned its attention to the other car and clawed through the open driver’s window. Larston heard screams emanate from the vehicle, saw it rock on the shocks, saw a girl try to force her way through a side window, only to be sucked back in as she arched to drop out. He hit the emergency button on the car radio control. “207 start me another unit now!” He didn’t hear the dispatcher’s reply, didn’t hear Sergeant Manson Ezell ordering everyone to stay off the air as he responded to the scene.

The car was jerking four ways at once, four people were being torn apart inside. Larston rolled down his window and angled his shotgun out of it, hoping the dog would get out of the car so he could get a clean shot. “Shit,” he moaned.

As quickly as it had started the dog writhed its way through the back passenger window and shot across an adjacent field and into a stand of trees. Larston jumped out and fired a fleeting round at it, which, as with the others, missed by a mile. He darted back to the Charger, jumped in and locked the doors. He stayed there, shaking, until Ezell finally drove up.

“What the hell is going on here?” the sergeant demanded. Larston tried to quickly explain the situation, not realizing that he was talking a mile a minute and was incomprehensible. Ezell was eventually able to calm the deputy down and get him to come out of the car.

Even though Larston told him that the animal was gone Ezell was taking no chances. He retrieved his patrol rifle, and the two slowly approached the car, stopping at the back passenger door. Larston covered while Ezell opened the door. Ezell cursed and jumped back as innards spilled out. He shined his light inside on the gutted remains of the four youths. Larston felt his stomach turning. They both fixated on the grizzly scene for a minute, this kind of damage was beyond the pale for even a rabid hound. A sudden noise broke their reverie. It was a howl, warbling and high, shooting through the night.

Ran Laben removed his ballistic helmet as he took in the night. The darkness was nearly absolute without night vision, but his neck needed the respite, and the environment impressed upon him the precarious situation that only technology and experience kept at bay.

He strained against a plate carrier loaded down with ammunition, grenades, water, and radios. At least it was cold out. Here in New Mexico spring had not yet arrived. The desert was brittle and wind hardened in the harsh remnants of a forceful winter. Laben was grateful for the weather, however. The wind helped him to stay awake. He had been out for sixteen hours now, leading a six man BORTAC element through one of the emptiest deserts in America to kill America’s most elusive quarry.

He re-donned the helmet and activated fusion goggles to survey the team’s route. The thermal overlay showed residual heat left by his prey, a track of footprints from perhaps four individuals. It was difficult to ascertain how long it had been since they passed, but he and his team were on the right trail.

He walked to his assistant team leader, who was already anticipating Laben’s next command. “Let’s move out,” Laben said as quietly as possible, for he knew how far sound travels at night, and how well his opposition could hear. The dry ground made for quiet walking, with the wind further masking their sound. Laben could never feel truly safe though. The things were too fast, and too smart to convince him that he was safe even behind the guns.

The tracks vanished in the heavy brush, reappearing now and again in dry stream beds and rough, eroded sections. He stumbled, robbed of depth perception and peripheral acuity by the goggles. When he stopped to check his footing before moving ahead, he heard something below scratching for purchase against the earth. Looking down and ahead of himself he realized that the black expanse he had first thought to simply be a ditch was in fact a deep escarpment, and he relayed the order to climb down and be careful about it. Two marksmen with long range rifles provided cover while the rest of the team made the two meter drop into the water carved earth.

Glowing tracks at the bottom disappeared into a black hole in a bank of red dirt that appeared green with the goggles. They had located a smuggling tunnel, Laben thought. He considered their next course of action. Technically they were not supposed to operate in Mexico without Mexican liaisons, but in this locale, against an enemy that neither understood nor respected national boundaries, he considered how far the rule could bend. He was quite unprepared to hear gunfire coming out of the tunnel, but the sound instantaneously made his decision for him. “Stack up! Let’s move!” he ordered.

They formed themselves into a single file line, leaving the marksmen to guard the entrance, crouched as they moved into the claustrophobic space. The tracks still shone before them, but the team ignored them now. They made it several dozen meters before the shooting abruptly stopped. Now their movement became painfully slow. There were no corners to clear, but neither was there any cover. Slow movement was their only protection. After several more meters the first shells appeared. A mixture of rifle and handgun brass of various calibers littered the dirt floor. They walked on, sweeping the floor with infrared lights. Bootprints formed a dance like pattern on the thermal filters. The sound of running drifted from farther up the tunnel.

“Brad?” Laben whispered to his assistant lead.

“Can’t see shit.”

“Nothing on the thermals,” said Laben. “Let’s push.”

They advanced forward, and pools of liquid glowed in their vision. Laben noted something ragged and narrow. “Hold up,” he ordered.

“What have you got?” asked the medic.

Laben inspected the object with his IR light. “It’s an arm,” he whispered.

They pressed on, finding pieces of other limbs, twisted rags of clothing holding shredded body parts, and firearms scattered around.

“Fucking hell,” Laben muttered. He looked up and noticed green light farther down. “Keep moving.”

They found an exit and walked out into the Chihuahua Desert. There was no sign of their game, but through the wind Laben heard howling and yelping. They stood for several minutes, looking south, until the sound faded.

“Come on,” Laben finally ordered, turning back to the passage. It was time to get back to the States and report their grizzly scene. As he stepped in again, Laben thought he could make out a scream in the distance.